The process...

We began by choosing appropriate material for repeated reading. We decided to use material already available to us through our reading series, Scott Foresman Reading Street. One of the purposes for using the iPad was to eliminate the need for a paper version of the material to be read. In a previous manifestation of this practice, we had used iPods and a text book or a paper passage. We wanted to eliminate the difficulty of trying to hold the device and trying to track at the same time, so we tried several different apps until we found one that could import our digital copy of the passage as well as record the tracking (annotation) and the oral reading of the student. Another consideration was cost for the app. After some trial and error, we found bContext, an interactive whiteboard app that could record both voice and annotations. Happily, this was a free download.

To access the digital copy of the passage, we saved the downloaded digital files in Dropbox. We saved them one passage at time so they could be pulled out as needed. We pulled out each weekly passage on our desktop prior to use. We could then open the passage from Dropbox on the iPad. Once the teacher has done these things, the students can follow the steps shown on the anchor chart shown below.